[clug] Volume names

[Brendan Jurd]

On 15 April 2011 19:38, Keith Sayers <keiths at apex.net.au> wrote:
>        I came back to that after some guidance from Steve Jenkin and found that the SATA
> drive I had installed - the only one then in the box - had become /dev/sda5 (it had
> previously been /dev/sdb5),

It might be worth mentioning a little something about what these
device names mean.

Linux creates "device nodes" (the pseudo-files under /dev) for storage
devices in the order they are discovered during bootup.  For PATA
(IDE) drives, the first drive is named 'hda' as in "hard drive A", the
second 'hdb', then 'hdc' and so on.  For SATA it is 'sda', 'sdb',
'sdc'.

So if you have two normal SATA hard drives in your machine, and you
boot it up, you'll have /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.  If you then plug in an
eSATA or USB removable drive, you'll get a /dev/sdc.

When you see a number after the drive name (as in /dev/sda5), that
refers not to the drive itself, but to a partition on the drive and to
the filesystem (if any) which has been created on that partition.

You can use programs like 'fdisk' or 'parted' to explore the partition
arrangement on your drives.  Just be careful not to make any changes
unless you really mean it!

Cheers,
BJ